


Milk Mustache

by Selkit



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Epiphanies, F/M, Ficlet, laughter is the best medicine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-30
Updated: 2013-10-30
Packaged: 2017-12-30 23:24:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1024627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selkit/pseuds/Selkit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ichabod Crane versus a glass of milk, or: the moment Abbie first realizes there's something not entirely platonic going on here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Milk Mustache

It’s the silliest thing, when it finally happens. Nothing particularly special or out of the ordinary about it—at least, no more than anything else that’s happened to Abbie since that night at the stables, when she suddenly became the poster child for “out of the ordinary.”

She watches Crane pacing around the kitchenette, expounding on the merits of their latest theory, his ridiculously long legs eating up the ground like he’s trying to outrun the morning sunlight spilling through the window. He holds a no-nonsense bagel in one hand and a glass of milk in the other, interrupting himself every few seconds for a quick bite or drink.

(He used to be a lot more fastidious in his eating habits, Abbie suspects, but it’s kind of hard to care much about table manners when you’re on the Most Wanted list of every demon, witch, and headless horseman in town.) 

“As I was saying, Lieutenant—”

He does a smart about-face, pausing to finish off his milk and setting the glass on the countertop. “I believe that—”

He doesn’t get any farther before Abbie’s snort cuts him off, quickly muffled behind her hand as it turns into a giggle. 

“Got milk?” she asks before she can stop herself, raising an eyebrow at the impressive milk mustache spread over his upper lip. 

He gives her a look, half quizzical and half _would you please pay attention, Miss Mills?_

“No, not anymore,” he says, his voice rising in that ‘not quite a statement, not quite a question’ way he has. “I just finished it.”

Abbie waves a hand. “No, it’s—I wasn’t actually asking if you had milk. It’s…”

She isn’t sure if it’s because he looks so ridiculous standing there staring at her, milk mustache clashing with his intensely furrowed brow, or if it’s the fact that she’s about to explain a bunch of milk commercials to a man from the 1700s. Or maybe it’s just that all this craziness has finally snapped her hold on her sanity. 

Whatever the reason, Abbie laughs, and laughs, and laughs some more.

(And damn, does it feel good.)

When she finally comes up for air, Ichabod is still standing there staring at her, milk mustache and all, the half-eaten bagel hovering a few inches away from his face. And suddenly—for the first time since she met him—she doesn’t want a thing in the world other than to jump up and kiss that milk right off of him, because she can’t remember the last time anyone made her laugh like that. 

Figures it would be a time-traveling, demon-magnet soldier from the Revolutionary War.

The laughter-induced euphoria starts to ebb, enough for that stray thought— _I just came this close to kissing Ichabod Crane_ —to repeat itself, turning over and over in her mind, crystallizing from a whim to a sudden stark reality. 

_Oh._

She really ought to be panicking right about now, she figures. What with all the other completely insane things happening in her life, the _last_ thing she needs is sudden inconvenient feelings for her—her—

(Work partner? Consulting detective? Time-transplanted associate?)

—Her _Ichabod Crane._

Yet somehow, when compared to estranged sisters and demon armies and black-eyed sandmen stalking her dreams, a not-exactly-platonic attraction to her fellow Witness doesn’t seem all that bad. 

His pointed throat-clearing pulls her from the giggly aftershocks, and she looks up at him, meeting his eyes with an _almost_ straight face.

“Lieutenant,” he says gravely, one eyebrow arched. “Are you quite all right?”

Abbie smiles. 

“You know what, Crane?” she says. “I’m just fine.”

And for just that moment, at least, it’s the truest thing in the world.


End file.
